Mother to face trial 13 years after child's death

Nearly 13 years after she put her 3-year-old daughter in a scalding bath as punishment, a Youngsville woman who spent eight years as a fugitive wanted for allegedly burning her child to death will return to court next month.

A felony trial will be held Jan. 12 for Desiraee Greene Nelson, the 35-year-old indicted in 2002 by a Lafayette Parish grand jury on a second-degree murder charge for allegedly burning her daughter Dominiquie Greene with scorching water. The child suffered third-degree burns on 30 percent of her body and later died of an infection that shut down her organs.

Nelson, who had been wanted since September 2005, was apprehended in December 2013, when she was arrested on shoplifting charges at Walmart. According to court documents, she had been living in Youngsville, just a few blocks from the police department.

In March 2002, a week after she was indicted, Nelson was released on $60,000 bail. Five months later, she entered a written plea of not guilty. The trial was delayed multiple times, and when Nelson did not show to a rescheduled date in September 2005, a bench warrant for her arrest was issued. It was ordered to stay in effect after she failed to appear again a month later.

Nelson was freed in the weeks following her arrest for theft last year — the details of which are not provided in court documents — after she bonded out on $20,000 bail that was posted for her bench warrant. Days before, her request to have the warrant recalled was denied. In her failed motion, she claims that she was unable to attend her 2005 court dates because of Hurricane Rita and that she complied with her attorneys' instructions to wait for them to tell her when they would be rescheduled. She also claims her address had not changed, "thus (Nelson) could have been personally served."

In a hand-written letter submitted into evidence, Nelson's mother, Thelma Thibeaux, pleads "for the mercy of the court," begging for Nelson's other children to be considered. Thibeaux claims Nelson would have appeared in court if she had known "she had to be there" and that neither she nor her daugther knew "nothing about the system" that she asserts has treated her family "badly for long enough."

"I myself have to live with the fact that I told her to tell these people what they wanted to hear only because Mr. (Carencro police Detective Timmy) Prejean said she would be going home," Thibeaux writes.

The Rev. Dianne Keal of Lively Hope Pentecostal Church in Youngville, who says she is Nelson's pastor and aunt in a letter, notes that Nelson was a young but good mother who often sought Keal's guidence in how to appropriately punish her children. Keal says Nelson "missed out on a lot in life, especially education-wise," and "never got the chance to attend college" like most people at that age. Nelson was 22 when she was charged for her daugther's death.

Because of that, Keal insists, Nelson "would never hurt her kids."

As of Sunday evening, messages left with prosecutor Royale Colbert were not returned. Court documents still list Lafayette lawyer Harold Register as her attorney, but in August he withdrew as her counsel because she failed to meet financial obligations, six months after her previous attorney had withdrawn from representing her.